Miami Herald commentary: Death camp visit shows the worst of humanity
My response was printed on the Miami Herald website.
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BY LEONARD PITTS, lpitts@herald.com
KRAKOW, Poland -- The concentration camp is around the corner from a McDonald's. It is up the hill from a Shell station and next door to an apartment complex.
Plaszow -- that's the name of it -- was immortalized in Schindler's List. Oskar Schindler plucked hundreds of doomed Jews from this place and gave them shelter in his factory. If you saw the movie, you remember the house from which commandant Amon Goeth shot Jews for target practice. It's still here. Standing near it, you can hear the squeal of children in the apartment house playground.
I don't know what I expected a concentration camp to be when I joined 24 other people on this ''interfaith pilgrimage'' to Polish Holocaust sites, but I didn't expect this. I didn't expect the place where human beings were enslaved, tortured and killed to be within sight of a warehouse superstore.
I ask our guide, Chris Huszczanowski, if all this development around the camp is new, something that has happened since the war. No, he says. This was always an urban area.
I had supposed a murder camp would be far from civilization, tucked into some dark, wooded place where its grisly business could be conducted in secrecy. It's a misconception that is, I now realize, first cousin to a misconception many Americans have about the lynchings of African Americans in the years between the Civil War and the civil rights movement. Many of us imagine those killings to have been done in shadow by a few depraved individuals. But the truth is, they were promoted by newspapers, memorialized by photographers and attended by women, children and men who acted as if they were going to the county fair.
In other words, people knew.
The same is true of the Polish people and the murdered Jews. How could they not know? The main camp of Auschwitz is across the street from a strip mall. From the guard tower at Auschwitz-Birkenau, you can see private homes. Majdanek is on a busy street, Belzec in a residential neighborhood. It is said that during the war, a little boy climbed a tree overlooking Belzec and drew ghastly, ghostly pictures of what he saw.
''It's such a funny thing,'' says Joe Engel, a 77-year-old Holocaust survivor who is with the pilgrimage group. ``People say they didn't know. All the camps were so close to the city. How could they not know? You could smell the ashes, the flesh.''
At this point, the people of Poland would want you to know a couple of things. The first is that they were a conquered nation. These camps were set up on Polish soil, yes. But they were set up by Germans. The second is that many Poles risked fortune and life to help the Jews. Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust education and commemoration group, maintains a list -- The Righteous Among Nations -- of non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews. More than a quarter of the 20,757 now on the list were Polish, a higher proportion than from any other nation. All this is a matter of record.
But it is also a matter of record that many Poles collaborated, cooperated, pretended not to see, betrayed runaway Jews, happily joined in acts of mass murder.
Still, the question here isn't, ''What's wrong with them?'' It is, rather, ``What's wrong with us?''
Because this is not a Polish failing, but a human one. What is it about seeing some poor and bedraggled Other being mistreated that brings out the beast in us? Why does cruelty so readily beget more cruelty? How is it that the barbarism of others so readily gives license to our own worst impulses, so rarely encourages our best?
You always like to think you would do better somehow, do the right thing, regardless.
To be here is to question that smug assurance. It is to wonder: Who would I really be in the moment of decision? Would I be who I've always hoped, someone large and brave? Or would I be someone smaller, more niggardly and scared?
To be here is to realize that you don't know. And to hope you never learn.
two stories from the Boston Globe
July 3, 2005,
CELEBRATING PASSAGE TO FREEDOM: SURVIVOR, LIBERATOR MEET 60 YEARS AFTER CONCENTRATION CAMP RESCUE
By Deborah Fineblum Raub, Globe Correspondent
Frederick Grasso of Framingham and Henry Lefman of Wellesley live just a few miles apart.
Over the past 50 years, they could have bumped into each other any number of times and paid no notice, neither realizing that they had crossed paths at a moment that forever changed both their lives.
On May 6, 1945, Grasso's Army unit liberated Mauthausen concentration camp, freeing Lefman from more than five nightmare years in Nazi captivity.
A month ago, when they posed for the photograph that appears above this story, they learned about their connection.
It was taken at the 60th Anniversary Liberation Banquet on June 5, when 220 men and women, some with canes and walkers the survivors and the soldiers who liberated them gathered at Congregation Mishkan Tefila in Newton to remember the devastation that brought them together and celebrate the lives they've managed to build in its wake.
The organizers wanted a photograph of a soldier and a camp survivor. Grasso agreed to be in the picture, so the announcement went out over the speakers: "Any survivor here from Mauthausen?" No one answered. Then a second time and still no response.
On the third try, a woman called out: "My husband, my hus band was at Mauthausen!"
She helped her husband to his feet, and the couple made their way slowly to the front of the building, where the photographer and Grasso were waiting.
"You were at Mauthausen?" Grasso asked.
"You were one of the liberators?" Lefman asked in return.
Then the two elderly men Lefman, who was a 17-year-old "walking skeleton" on that long-ago day, and Grasso, who was a battle-hardened private fell into each others' arms and wept.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Lefman said. "Thank you for saving my life."
"People don't believe what you went through," Grasso answered him. "Even now, they still don't believe it."
But 60 years ago, Grasso was already determined that others would comprehend the horror of what he and the rest of the US Army's 11th Armored Division had seen. He still carries a worn envelope stuffed with faded black-and-white snapshots he was forbidden to take. In disobeying his superiors and using a buddy's camera to record the terrifying sights, Grasso managed to preserve a slice of history in all its chilling detail.
Grasso's story
Over the years, Grasso now 83 has shared his experience with schoolchildren and community groups, on TV and in newspapers. "People don't realize there were thousands and thousands of them lying on the ground when we got there women, guys, and kids," he said. "They were in rows as far as we could see."
At war's end, the division had weathered the Battle of the Bulge and were told they had an assignment in Austria. "We didn't know what was next," Grasso recalled. It wasn't until they arrived at Maut hausen that their officers said, "Help them. Do whatever you can do for them."
It also fell to these GIs to help bury the dead.
"My outfit had to bulldoze the bodies into the hole. It was a huge mass grave," Grasso said. "The whole bunch of us were sick to our stomachs for three days."
Grasso said the soldiers drafted residents of surrounding villages to do the hands-on work of burying the dead, forcing them to confront the grisly remains of the death factory that they had willfully ignored.
"We're the ones who opened those gates; the Germans were all gone by the time we got there," Grasso said. "We fed them our K-rations. We gave them whatever clothes we had. You wouldn't believe what those people had to do just to survive."
Three days later after transporting the weakest to hospitals and helping the more able-bodied return to what was left of their homes, their families, and their lives the Army pulled out of Mauthausen. But Grasso's memories have haunted him for six decades.
"I saw a TV show where a fellow said the whole thing was nothing but a farce, but when I called the station, they wouldn't put me through," Grasso said. "I could have told them that it was real, all right the rows of bodies, the ovens filled with bones. And the stench that was real, too."
Now retired from his sales job with Coca-Cola, Grasso continues to give talks about Mauthausen. And he brings along his pictures.
"A lot of people can't take it. They look away," he said. "They couldn't believe it then the average American didn't know about concentration camps; it was kept quiet and they don't want to believe it now. My own son couldn't believe it until I showed him the pictures."
But until last month, Grasso had never met one of the survivors he'd helped liberate. Not until he met Henry Lefman. "He's the first one I've ever met from there," he said quietly. "Was it ever good to see him."
Lefman's story
Lefman was 12 years old when the Nazis occupied his hometown of Radom, Poland, on Sept. 8, 1939. He and the town's other 30,000 Jewish citizens were crowded into ghettos, where many succumbed to starvation, epidemics, and beatings. The punishment for failing to wear the yellow Star of David was death.
In the summer of 1942, the survivors were told to report to the railway station, where 600 older people and children were shot and 6,000 others, including Lefman's mother, Sara, and his brothers, Mendel and Shlomo, were deported to Treblinka. Lefman and his father, Ignacy, were sent to Majdanek.
In the fall of 1943, the camp's captives were evacuated. As they headed to the railway station, a guard struck Lefman's ailing father across the head with the butt of his rifle for moving too slowly. That night, his father extracted a promise.
"I have to tell you something very important, and you, my son, must promise to fulfill what I am going to tell you. You must live, no matter what will happen to me. You must live to tell the world what happened. You must live to remember your family."
His father died in the night. He was 42.
Other camps followed for Lefman. Plaszow, Wieliczka, and then, with the Russians close on their heels in March 1944, the Germans transported their prisoners to Mauthausen.
"During all that time, only my promise to my father kept me going," Lefman said.
Mauthausen, he discovered, was "an extermination factory where prisoners exhausted by the forced labor from neighboring camps Gusen and Ebensee were sent to the gas chamber."
Lefman's first assignment there: hauling rocks in the stone quarry.
After a year of deprivation and back-breaking labor, Lefman began to hear bombs exploding nearby and rumors that the Allied forces were getting closer. The prisoners' meager rations were nearly gone and, one May morning, the guards didn't show up at all.
Weak and disoriented, Lefman walked through the camp's open gate.
"I have no family, no country, and no home," he recalled thinking. He cast off the uniform he'd worn for so long and wandered less than a mile before a jeep full of soldiers pulled over.
"At first I was frightened, because I didn't know what they wanted, and I was almost fainting from the hunger, but they explained they were American soldiers and had come to help me. I realized it was a godsend, a miracle. They were very kind."
The GIs drove him to an American hospital in Bavaria, where he slowly recovered his strength. He enrolled in a university in Munich, learning enough German to earn a master's degree in engineering. He came to the United States in 1950.
"Here I became a free man, free from oppression, free from being brutalized . . . but not from nightmares," he said. Lefman was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.
Retired from his career as a nuclear engineer, Lefman has had several strokes that severely impaired his ability to walk and speak. His wife, Tania, who spent the war years hiding with her mother in the Polish forest, serves as his interpreter. Nonetheless, he keeps his mind sharp by playing chess online and he takes joy in his three children and five grandchildren. "He's a survivor so he can survive anything," his wife said.
And he can still savor a joy that only a survivor can know.
"For anyone to meet his liberators is a great event," he said. "They were the lifesavers. There are no words for it. I'm still blessing Americans and America itself for saving my life."
Finding Lefman after 60 years also had a powerful impact on Grasso.
"I was so glad to see him," he said. "I was so glad just to see he's alive."
Deborah Fineblum Raub works for Combined Jewish Philanthropies, one of the cosponsors of the 60th Anniversary Liberation Banquet.
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The Boston Globe
July 17, 2005,
POLAND'S NEW FASCINATION WITH JEWS
BY JEFF JACOBY
IN A 1973 ESSAY, Cynthia Ozick speculated on how Jews would be remembered if, like every other nation of antiquity, they had vanished long ago. As people speak today of "the glory that was Greece," she mused, the achievements of the long-gone Jews would be celebrated as "the genius that was Israel."
"How if there were no Jews the world would be enraptured!" she wrote. "The people that stood at Sinai to receive a desert vision of purity, the people of scholarly shepherds, humane prophetic geniuses, dreams of justice and mercy" how admired they would be. In a world without Jews, the memory of Jewish civilization would be endlessly fascinating. "Christian ladies," Ozick imagined, would "study 'The Priceless Culture of the Jews' at Chautauqua in the summertime" or create Jewish prayer shawls at "a workshop on tallith making."
Well, Jews haven't vanished from the world. They have, however, all but vanished from Poland. More than 90 percent of Poland's Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, and most of those who survived emigrated long ago. The result is that a land that once was home to 3 million Jews 10 percent of Polish society, the largest Jewish population in Europe is now more than 99.9 percent non-Jewish. Millions of Poles have never knowingly met a Jew. But, oh, how enraptured they are with the genius that was Israel!
I arrived in Krakow near the end of the annual Jewish Culture Festival, a nine-day extravaganza of concerts, lectures, films, and exhibitions all with the aim, to quote a festival brochure, of "presenting Jewish culture in all its abundance." An elegant catalog, 160 pages long, lists a dizzying array of offerings: lectures on "Talmudic thought" and "Jewish medical ethics," forums on European anti-Semitism and the Hebrew poetry of Haim Nahman Bialik, concerts of klezmer music, liturgical music, and "Songs of the Ghettos and Jewish Resistance," workshops on Jewish cooking, Hasidic wedding dances, and celebrating Hanukkah with children.
Such a cornucopia would be impressive in Los Angeles or New York. In Krakow, with just 200 Jews in a metropolitan population of 1.5 million, it is astounding. More or less as Ozick imagined in 1973, Jews and Jewish culture are being embraced far more ardently in their absence than was ever the case when they were such a visible presence.
I caught part of the festival's closing concert, a kind of Jewish Woodstock that grows bigger every year. In the heart of what used to be Krakow's Jewish quarter, before an outdoor stage dominated by a giant electric menorah, 10,000 exuberant Poles swayed, cheered, and sang along as dozens of Jewish artists performed. The concert lasted for seven hours and was broadcast live on TV. In a country with no more than a wisp of Jewish life, where does such an appetite for things Jewish come from?
For some Poles, interest in Jewish culture is simply fun, or a fad; several in the crowd told me they had come because the concert is such a popular scene. But others, like 26-year-old Ola, who attended with her two young daughters, were drawn by an inchoate attraction they couldn't explain.
"I can't imagine Krakow without Jewish culture," she told me. But when I gently pressed her to say what "Jewish culture" means how, for example, would she explain it to her daughters? she replied, vaguely, "It's more about feeling than knowing. 'Jewish' to me means a warm feeling."
Then there are people like Tomasz Sierkierski, a 30-year-old computer programmer who was one of a dozen Poles honored during the festival for preserving Jewish landmarks. Searching for a way to reclaim some of Poland's lost Jewish heritage, he discovered a forgotten Jewish cemetery in Skarszewy, a small town not far from Gdansk. "It was really destroyed," he said, "full of trash and weeds." He recruited a group of teens from his old high school, and they spent the summer of 2004 carrying away the rubbish, cleaning and righting the fallen gravestones, and building a stone border.
Why do Poles like Sierkierski and there are many go to so much trouble? Of all the causes to care about, why worry about Jewish memory?
"Because," he told me, "it is Polish memory too." He knows that nothing will bring back the rich Jewish culture that was so much a part of Polish life. But he wants at least to keep it from being forgotten.
When he first came to Skarszewy, he couldn't locate the cemetery. No one knew anything about it. Eventually an elderly woman pointed him in the right direction, and he found the neglected graves.
"Before this project," Sierkierski said, "no one even knew a Jewish cemetery existed. Now the whole town knows." That, it is clear, made the whole thing worthwhile.
Final list: What I loved about Poland
1) all the wonderful people I met
-Kasia, who dreamed up this entire project, and whose mother and daughter make fabulous fruit pierogies
-Lynn, who so generously met me at the airport in Warsaw and accompanied me to Krakow
-Bridget, who I had a ton of laughs with. We also discussed lofty topics such as heinous fashion trends
-Liz, who showed me how to walk like a monkey and who has enormous zest
-Christie, who has the world's worst luck about luggage and the best smile
-Dan, the only person I could talk to about baseball and who has the face of a model but won't stop wearing his pants down around his butt
Lynn, Bridget, Liz, Christie, Dan and I were the first crop of this summer's volunteers. There were only a few days that we were all together, but I really marvel at how well we got along. No fights, no major disagreements, it was if we had all decided we were going to put petty crap aside for awhile and enjoy each other and our adventure.
-Gregorsz and Mariusz, who know how to climb fences and find all the best nightspots in Krakow
the indomitable Polish volunteers: the Magda's, Kuba, Joanna, Anka, and those of you whose names I've sadly forgotten
-Jupi, Sigmund, and Krystyna, who showed me such wonderful Polish hospitality during my trips to Koszalin and Pultusk
-the Patria staff, who put up with lots of questions, requests to use the phone and hand gestures to request scrambled eggs
The people really made this trip great!
2) few overweight people. For the most part, Poles seem very slim and trim.
3) the goat's cheese, especially grilled. I had something similar in China many years ago and loved that, too.
4) spending a large percentage of every day outside
5) forcing myself to rely on my feet for transportation
6) being able to participate in this great program and learning more about what happened to Poland and its population during World War II
That's it. I hope to post more pictures, but I'm finished with my essays now. Hope you liked it!
more about Warsaw
At this point, I’m probably just writing for my own benefit, to remember what I did in Poland. Of course, to a certain extent, that’s been one of the primary reasons I started the blog. So I plan to detail my final weekend in Warsaw, add a few “parting comments,” some pictures, and put this baby to bed, so to speak.
The trip to Warsaw was enhanced by the presence of Bridget. Had she not accompanied me, I probably would have stayed in the dorm from Hell and I probably would not have wasted, oops, spent money on “Monster in Law,” the new Jane Fonda movie. To remind me of our age difference, I had to explain some of Jane Fonda’s history to my 18-year old companion. So be it.
We arrived in Warsaw and I was filled with dread that it would be impossible to find our way out of the train station, find the bus, find the stop for the dorm, find someone who spoke English so we could register there, etc. Silly me to have worried so much; the logistics turned out to be simple. The only reason for dread was seeing our room in the dorm. Cheap, it was, which was a primary concern for me. But the place was just too depressing. And I didn’t even tell B about the bathrooms. Nothing was particularly dirty, it was just all so run-down. The concept of having seen better days doesn’t even apply. I don’t think there ever were better days for this place. To gladden ourselves, we went for lunch, to a very nice place, where the waitress ran out of the restaurant after we had left to return B’s credit card. How nice is that, eh?
I haven’t mentioned the rain, but a serious downpour began when we were on the bus, traveling aimlessly. It was just luck that made us get off where we did, where that nice restaurant materialized out of nowhere. But not til we waited under the little bus depot for about 10 minutes during the worst of the rain.
After lunch, another place materialized, an Internet café. B jumped onto Expedia and we found a decent price at the local Holiday Inn, which we reserved posthaste. After being ripped off mightily at the Internet café, we devised our strategy for checking out of the dorm –okay- we devised our lie. They were very nice, and returned all our money, a total of about 20$, to us.
We took the bus, yet again, -the rain had cleared- to the HI, and it felt like paradise. For about 60$ a night total, we had beds with mattresses and box springs, a shower and bathtub at arms reach (instead of down the hall), a direct-dial phone and cable TV, complete with English language stations and a huge breakfast buffet included. We could barely believe our good fortune.
So then we went exploring. B had this crazy idea that she wanted to see a movie. I wasn’t against the idea, the only problem was that there were only two English-language movies showing and one of them was War of the Worlds. We got tickets for the Jane Fonda vehicle and then split up for awhile to explore on our own. Talk about good fortune, the Cow Parade (cowparade.com) was in Warsaw! Unfortunately, I didn’t have a map, but I just wandered around and took photos of about 6 or 7 Polish cows. What a treat.
Had a potato pancake for dinner, went to the movie, and then went back to our palatial hotel. I wanted to make an early night of it since my trip to Pultusk began fairly early the next day.
Sunday, July 10: B decided to go with me and we took a local bus to Pultusk, arriving a little after 9am. Krystyna, my guide, met us at the station and the oddysey began. We drove to what K referred to as the Jewish section of Pultusk, which was made up of two old buildings and a monument. While Pultusk is a nice small town, the tour of it was a little underwhelming. I think it’s because what I was looking for (more traces of the Jewish community) no longer exists there. She did mention that the local history museum has in its collection some headstones from the local, no-longer existing Jewish cemetery, but unfortunately the museum was closed. While in Pultusk, K made us at home at her apartment, which was very cute. She served us a delicious blueberry pastry. Later, we drove to Ciechanow, another town that my ancestors lived in. While Pultusk had a lot of charm, Ciechanow was a bigger city, with a lot of large apartment block buildings, and a generally run-down appearance. K showed us a large open area in the center of several apartment buildings. She told us that it’s likely that the open area has stayed open because it is the former site of a Jewish cemetery. Near the edge of the area is a monument, but other than that, the area is unmarked. Our final destination was the town of Makow, which before the war was almost entirely a Jewish town. Three buildings survive, but you wouldn’t know it to look at them. One was probably a synagogue, and is on a street that translates, from Polish to Hebrew into a word similar to “synagogue.” At least I think that’s what K was telling us. In Makow, we also looked at a monument to the Jewish population that is built of headstones. It’s a very impressive site.
On our return to Warsaw, we had dinner in the old part of the city, which is lovely, but not real. Warsaw was leveled during World War II, and the old town was reconstructed, It appears to be very realistic, with lots of narrow, windy streets. The oddest thing we saw was a street performer dressed in the unmistakable sheet of a KKK member. That was a little jarring, to say the least. This is not my lasting impression of Warsaw; I’m just mentioning it for effect.
Warsaw vs. Krakow
Yes, I am back, safe and sound, in the USA, but I still have more to say. I will make a few final postings, and put up some pictures, and then close the blog.
I spent 2.5 days in Warsaw. Even though I had spent a few hours there the day I arrived from Boston, I didn't take it all in at that time. My impression of Warsaw is not as favorable as my impression of Krakow. Warsaw feels huge, huger than huge, and very modern. Krakow retains a lot of real, old-word charm and interest. Warsaw's office buildings are very tall, with much in the way of late 20th century-designed steel and glass structures. And its streets felt positively cavernous.
I guess Warsaw would look entirely different had it not been bombed to rubble during WWII.
ironic fame
Remember the other group I mentioned who is/was (today was their last day) at the site, who had all the "connections." They were referred to in the daily paper today, however the picture features us. See http://miasta.gazeta.pl/krakow/1,44425,2809871.html for our mugs, well, in profile. red shirt, me, facing me, Bridget, in back, Dan, to my left, Magda.
plans and pictures
Tomorrow Bridget and I leave for Warsaw on the 8am train, which unlike American trains, will arrive in Warsaw on time, I am certain. We'll check in at this dorm we're staying at and then wander around, sightseeing.
Sunday I go to Pultusk, where I will meet a woman who will take me around to hopefully see some ancestral places. I have no idea what to expect, but she is hugely willing and I am hugely grateful.
Monday AM, to the Chopin airport and then home!
I assume I'll have internet access in Warsaw, so I'll try to check in. Remember, if you want to email me directly, please use my yahoo address: sabol1355@yahoo.com, as I don't always have access to my Tufts account.
When I get back home, I will collect all my pictures, put them into some kind of order, and post more of them on the blog.
last day is in the books
We had a shortened final day today. When we appeared in the office, we were asked in to sit and have coffee and cookies. This has never happened before, but we were only too happy to partake. The jovial mood may have been due to today being the birthday of one of the staff members.
We got to the site about 10:15, with our new broom that promptly fell apart. We worked on several areas til I wandered off to take some pictures. At the edge of the cemetery there is a monument. I was standing there taking a picture and two Polish women (roughly of my generation) started talking. I stumbled through "I don't speak Polish," in Polish and they answered, in Polish, with repeated thank yous. It was clear that they had a great deal of appreciation for the work being done and Plaszow, and it was very fitting to run into them on my last day. Unfortunately, they lapsed back into the 99.9% of the language I don't know, but as they walked away, they were saying, in thick Polish accents, "thank you very much," over and over again, interspersed, I'm sure with "is that the right way to say it?" in Polish. It was a great moment and I wish I had had the presence of mind to ask if I could get a picture with them.
I'm sure I should have something very pithy to say now, but I'd rather retreat quietly, remembering the 2 Polish ladies.
how to spend time in a Polish cemetery
The title is not the punchline of a joke. I just wanted to share two silly games we played recently. Yesterday, in between the rain, we taught two of the Polish volunteers how to swing a baseball bat, using a broken rake. One of them has a nice, even swing; the other one appears to lack the killer instinct of a Wade Boggs or a Sammy Sosa, the swing being lethargic, to say the least.
Today was even more fun. While we were resting up for the long walk back to the toolshed, Dan came up with the brilliant tic-tac-toe-in-the-dirt, also played with the same broken rake. To be continued tomorrow, the totals are Bridget 1, Laurie 1 and Dan bringing up the rear with a sad score of zero.
And tonight, after a fabulous dinner at a Ukranian restaurant, Bridget and I reenacted some of the famous sword-fighting scenes from The Three Mustekeers with our poster holders. Do we know how to have fun, or what?
Ages?
Laurie = 50
Dan = 22
Bridge = 18
Jagiellonian Library visit
I had an extra hour today so I went to visit the Jag, my pet name for this enormous building, the "heart" of the oldest Polish university. I made the mistake of going to the front door, only to be told that the front door is now the back door. So I walked around to the other side of the building, which is so big it's in two different zip codes ;-)
I found the door, waltzed in and looked around, first at the JPII stamp display, then at a nice photo exhibit about Heidelberg. I thought I'd dare to go upstairs, but was told by the guard I needed to do something first, "over there." I went over there, and was given a one-day pass. I was pleased to cite my profession as librarian, but guess what: no one cared! Once completed, I took my card to the guard, and was told this time I needed to leave my bag "over there." I went over there, which turned out to be down 2 small flights of steps and to the right. I was asked, yet again, for my passport and given a key. I thought I was getting study carrel, but instead I was directed to a little locker to put away my purse.
I finally was allowed to get on the elevator and went up to the top floor. In the part of the building I was in, there are four floors, or maybe 5, depending on how you count. The top floor, I believe, was a special collections catalog room. I wandered around in there, having registered first, and then walked to the opposite end of the floor, where a staff member was stationed near some kind of conveyer belt. I assume they have a remote storage facility and that this is a pickup point. One floor down I peaked into a semi-darkened window that entered into a really busy area. It appeared to be a huge, old fashioned reading room, but try as I might, I couldn't figure out how to get there. One floor down, the entire space was covered with compact shelving. I ended up back on the main floor, where I stopped for a bottle of water in their cafeteria. As I left the building, I symbolically was kicking myself for not having arranged a tour.
rain-shortened work day today
With the exception of the first day all those weeks ago, this was the only time that rain has interrupted a work day. When we arrived, it was just spritzing and a tad cool. We took the opportunity to walk over to a giant statue commemmorating the site that was built some years ago. I'll post a picture of it at some point. It's about 30 feet high (Dan, the volunteer's estimate: "yeah, it's about the height of 3 basketball hoops), made of stone, with images of 5 people carved into it. In the same area are two other, smaller monuments. It's a pretty area, but somewhat spoiled by a Walmart-type store across the street. Such is the price of progress. We all noticed the contradiction of how nicely landscaped this area is, compared with the cemetery. It could be that this area is on land owned by the city.
As we were leaving the area, we all asked ourselves if we wanted to stay today. Two definitely didn't want to, two preferred to stay, and one was on the fence. We agreed that those that wanted to leave were welcome to, as long as they returned the tools to the shed so those of us who stayed wouldn't have to carry extra ones. Turned out, we all ended up going to the work site, where we stood under a tree for a few minutes while the spritz turned to rain.
The rain turned back to spritz and we continued our work, which has changed in the last week. It's become clear to us, talking with a rabbi and other officials, that Jewish law prohibits digging in a cemetery, or at least we think this is the case. So, to be on the safe side, we are only looking for stones that are apparent (or semi apparent) and cleaning around them. This has limited the new work we can do dramatically, but we want to observe Jewish law at all costs.
The rain finally got the better of us immediately after lunch, so we left about 12:45 or so. I stopped at a fascinating, if tiny museum that serves as a memory to the work of a non-Jewish pharmacist named Tadeusz Pankiewicz (rhyming with Mankiewicz for all you baseball fans). The museum is just a few blocks from where we're staying, which if you recall, was situated in the ghetto during the war. The pharmacy he owned was also in the ghetto. The Nazis told him he could go work at a pharmacy outside the ghetto, but I guess he delayed his answer so long that the Nazis rescinded the offer. Turns out the pharmacy became a place where Jews could gather, were given free drugs, medical advice, food, and shelter. Some Jews were even hidden there during some of the transports (sweeps) of people out of the ghetto to Auschwitz or one of the other concentration camps. For his bravery, he was awarded in 1983 the title "Righteous Among the Nations," which was given to non-Jews who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust. This is the same title given to Oskar Schindler. Personally, the most interesting part of the museum was its emphasis on Plaszow. I saw numerous still photos and video of the camp, along with some additional photos on a web display the museum has put together. It stll doesn't help me place where the cemetery was/is in relation to the rest of the camp, but it was very moving to see all this documentation.
As an aside, both Roman Polanski and Steven Spielberg have donated to the museum. I can't tell if the museum has a website, but see
http://www.pjonline.com/Editorial/20050122/comment/lett08.html#1. Pankiewicz wrote a book called "The Cracow Ghetto pharmacy," which is held in libraries all over the country.
cow and human
In Zakopane, I couldn't resist. Notice the pants and raincoat :-(
what is it?
This might look like a rope nautical bracelet, but it is goat cheese, done an interesting way. It's laying on its plastic bag.
more cheese
To give you an idea of how much delicious cheese there is in Zakopane (the town we visited last weekend), I took this photo. I believe, even though there are several different colors and shapes, that it comes in only two flavors: smoked and not smoked. The blob on the right is a giant wedge of the stuff.
waiting in line
This picture doesn't do justice to how long this line was at an ice cream stand. The Poles seem to love their ice cream in a serious way. And this store, a bare bones place, unlike some of the fancier ones, only has 4 flavors.
botanical garden
Last week when the keys to the toolshed were lost, I went to the Krakow botanical garden, which I believe is run by the Jagellonian University.
head stone
This is the only remaining stone in the Plaszow cemetery that is legible. Rumor has it this man was the grandfather of the girl in the red coat in "Schindler's List."
working
Just in case you are wondering if I do any work, Bridget took this photo of me shortly after we finished raking these two big piles of hay. You're not seeing things: the rake did only come to my arm pit. That is one wicked small rake.
Joshua Nelson with
Christy and Bridget got their picture taken with Joshua.
Joshua Nelson
A fantastic concert last Tuesday night. A 3rd generation African American Jew, if Nelson comes to your neighborhood, RUN, don't walk to get tickets! One of the best songs was "Observant Jew, with the chorus, "I want to be an observant Jew, read the Torah in Hee-brew..."
Joshua Nelson
poor photo, but it captures his energy
dinner
new friends at a good bye party for one of the American volunteers: Gregorsz, LS, Mariusz, Christy from Iowa
fence
This fence is in the old Jewish section of Krakow, Kazimierz. It's made of wrought iron and is, as you can see, a menorah.
Happy 4th!
But the indignity of it all: we had to work today! It's interesting being in a country on a national holiday of another country. While the desk attendant at the hostel greeted me with "best wishes on your holiday," the rest of Poland has so far not stopped work to light fireworks and eat cotton candy.
Today was the second day we've been onsite with another volunteer organization: students and their adults from Poland, Germany and Israel, who go around to Jewish cemeteries in Poland "tidying them up." On the surface, this sounds like a great idea. Slightly below the surface, they've just about clearcut the land, removing almost every tree (all small, but nice) except that they leave the all important 6-10 inches of stump to trip over. They also have their weed whackers doing overtime duty. Again, good, but I noticed today that for each blade of grass they trim, they just bend three more. So, today, we raked their whackings. This would not be such a bad chore, but I believe I've mentioned the rake situation before. Sadly, today's casualties included a rake and a broom. The rake that I used most of the day is made for a hobbit.
While we raked the other group swept gravestones and did some clipping. After the day ended, we all hung our heads wondering who will cut and rake the grass in another 6 weeks, when it will be knee high again. But ours is not to wonder why, or who, for that matter.
So, as for this other group, I identified today why I am uncomfortable with them. It's because they have all the connections and we're just some grass roots (pardon the bad pun) volunteers. Connection #1: Last Friday, the first day they were onsite, I noticed an older man walking around. Turns out he is an Auschwitz veteran and he is funding some of their work. He is from Hungary, and emigrated to Israel many years ago. We were able to talk to him at length, about his experiences during and after WW2, and he was very generous with his time. He had never heard of our organization, but praised us mightily for the work we're doing. Connection #2: today, a fellow from the Jewish Historical Institute from Warsaw spent some time with them. He came over to us and showed us some articles he has about Plaszow. One of them has a map that shows the borders of the cemetery though all of us, even some of the Poles who have spent a significant amount of time onsite, can't translate the map boundaries into reality. Connection #3: a reporter from a regional newspaper who took pictures of the cemetery for a spread that is to appear tomorrow. I don't know who alerted her to Plaszow, but she spent most of her time with the other group.
Our connections? Well, we have Kasia, our friend and program coordinator, who is trying to keep various entities happy (including cranky Americans), while moving the project forward on a shoestring. We also have a fabulous Pole named Taddeusz who brings us lunch and says, "Here is your breakfast, madam." You have see his presentation, which is quite stylish. If I remember, I'll make a video.
In my last posting, I noted that today began my last week and that I had a lot of mixed emotions. I didn't realize that jealousy was among them!
day trip to Zakopane
If you've read previous postings, you'll remember that I've mentioned a town down near the Slovakian border, in the Tatra mountain range, called Zakopane. It's portrayed as a jumping off point for skiing, hiking and other outdoor pursuits. I've wanted to go, and finally did, yesterday, Sat, July 1.
Accompanying me on the trip was Bridget, one of the other volunteers. She's young enough to be my daughter, and reminds me of my niece. We set off at about 8:30 on the tram to the bus station. Standing, waiting to get off the train, an old Polish woman must have felt I was invading her personal space, because she swung her plastic bags firmly against my knees. Glaring followed, but we agreed not to start WW3 since both countries have so much troop strength in Iraq.
We boarded the bus and things were pretty uneventful until the 2nd unplanned stop, during which nothing happened. Turns out the bus broke down. This gave the local sheep's cheese entrepreneurs cause for celebration and they wheeled their little mobile shops out to those of us who were hoping another bus would take pity on us. One did, but not before we were able to score some of this extraordinarily delicious cheese.
The second bus pulled into Zakopane simultaneously with the rain clouds. We were both fairly unprepared; for some reason I had worn sandals and Bridget was hatless. We were also mapless, but the less-than-friendly tourist specialist directed us to the town center. Through the heavy rain drops, providence shined on us, leading us to a fabulous local restaurant. On the menu, as a hot appetizer, was "grilled regional cheese with cranberries." For 6 zloty (2$) we got a small plate of about 6 slices of the gooey, golden cheese, with chunky cranberry sauce on the side.
After lunch, we wandered around the center, looking at tons of vendor stalls. Cheese, shoes the color of cheese, wood products the color of cheese, puppies, and lots of other stuff was for sale. We wound up at the funicular station (look it up) and hemmed and hawed about taking the trip up the mountain. The rain had stopped, but the skies were still cloudy, so we didn't think we'd be able to see much. To kill time, I took a bathroom break. I don't know if I've mentioned that in some bathrooms here, there is an entrance fee. At the one outside the funicular station, the price was 1.5 zloty, which, all things being equal, is very expensive. But oh, the service I got!! The attendant sprayed the room with air freshener, did a quick cleaning of the immediate area and pronounced it spotless. And it was, truly. A finer bathroom experience in Poland I don't think I've had, except outside the internet cafe I'm in at this very minute: no charge and the whole room is marble.
Anyway, the took the plunge for the ride and I'm glad we did. On the way up, we started talking to a woman who lives in Atlanta who's from Kirkwood MO (a STL suburb about 10 minutes from where I grew up). She and four friends from Atlanta are here and were very pleased to hear about what we're doing. After taking pictures of all of them with all of their cameras, one said to the others,"I'm amazed the way Dorothy makes friends so quickly!" And Dorothy said, "well they speak english!" Yeah, not too funny now, but it was at the time.
Bridget convinced me that we should take a ride on the Alpine slide they have at the funicular stop (along with ice cream shops and pizzerias and sunglasses huts). We did, it was fun.
Zakopane is a place you could stay in for days, but with the dismal weather, our interest waned at about 4 hours. The trip back was uneventful.
Back in Krakow, the Jewish festival ends today, but last night was a giant free concert under the stars. It was packed, but amazingly, we saw about 4 people that we know. We stayed there about three hours and made our way back to Patria.
Tomorrow starts my last week here. A lot of mixed emotions.
